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 I love this place. Every time I am in California visiting my friends and family, I always make multiple trips to In-N-Out. I don't know what it is about their hamburgers but they taste exceptionally well. I eat their fries "well done" in which they fry it twice to get them crunchy. If you have never been to this place, take some time to look them up on the internet. They are in various locations all around California, Nevada, and Arizona.
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Ever since I heard of the existence of the Extraterrestrial Highway (ETH) back in my college years, I always had an urge to visit to see what was going on over there. Last month I had some time to drive deep into the hot Nevada desert, so I gathered some of my old high school friends and off we went. The ETH was formerly known as Highway 375 and borders the super secret Air Force research facility, Area 51. The official name of Area 51 is really the Nellis Air Force Base Bombing and Test Range. This area is located Northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. The ETH is a 100 mile long stretch of highway that borders the eastern side of the test range. The only town within this 100 mile long stretch is the small town of Rachel, Nevada. Rachel, Nevada has a population of under 100 people. There is only one motel there which doubles as a bar, restaurant and gift shop. There has been a ridiculous amount of UFO sightings over the years near Rachel which is why the state of Nevada officially designated this highway the ETH in the late 1990's. It definitely brings a lot of tourism to the lonely town of Rachel. Talking to one of the locals there, although the town has less than 100 people, they get more than 1 million visitors a year. These people are curious travelers, stopping by to speak to the locals, to star gaze at night, and to see if any UFO's can be spotted. It doesn't surprise me that there will be a lot of unidentified objects since the Air Force developed awesome planes such as the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Stealth Fighter here. If you have never seen these planes before, you will think they are from outer space.
All of us definitely had a fun time. The rest of the photos can be found in the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2411763&id=3405466&l=1760200eda
If there are any photos you like, I will be more than happy to send you the high resolution version.
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| At my workplace, they disabled all the USB ports on all of our computers so I cannot use one of those portable USB Soda Can Coolers. (I hear those don't work that well anyways...) There is no room for a mini-fridge at work. Once you bring your cold sodas from home to work, there is no way of keeping it cold. If you have a hidden stash of soda, there isn't a way to make it colder than ambient room temperature when you want to drink it a few days later.
So what does a guy do?
Since I have a bit of time on leave, I constructed by own solid state Soda Can Cooler. The acquisition of parts was rather painful as I had to drive to more than 4 different places for all the parts needed. Piecing together everything was rather straightforward although it was a bit difficult soldering wires by myself. I had a crappy multimeter to work with (since I can't afford a good one) so there is no way to double check all the voltages and amps running though the entire system once it was done. 
During cooling operations, I have to sit next to it just in case the circuitry explodes and bursts into flames. On paper I am pumping 6 Amps through the system with 4 "C" batteries supplying 6 Volts. In reality I may be pumping more of that into the whole system but I will never know since I don't have the fancy equipment that I normally would have access to with the engineering school.
I built a battery light indicator in there. When the light goes off that means the batteries have no more juice left.
So far it has taken 30 minutes to get a 16oz. can at ambient temperatures to a few degrees below ambient. I can't trick the laws of thermodynamics. The current method of heat exchange between the can and the cooling element will require more creativity. This is a good working prototype though for further research into this type of cooling.
For the nerdy details of all the individual components and specifications used, hit me up via email.
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| I have been asked by my good friend Kirk to be a guest writer in his blog over at blogspot. Therefore I will be bouncing back and fourth between posting on my xanga and also on blogspot as well.
You can check out my guest posts at: http://k3wang.blogspot.com/
Cheers,
Tyrone
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|  I took this snapshot from the airplane on its approach to LAX. You can see the thick smog layer over downtown Los Angeles along with the plume of smoke coming from the wildfires in the San Gabriel mountains. The temperature is over 100 degrees and I am sweating profusely as I sit here in my room typing. I miss the Seattle weather already. It'll take me a few days to adjust to this atmosphere just in time for me to fly back to the Pacific Northwest.
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